Videos: Chris Matthews, not politicizing Kennedy’s death

posted at 12:55 pm on August 26, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

We’ve been hearing warnings all day about how conservatives shouldn’t politicize Ted Kennedy’s death. One might think that those warnings should be directed not at Kennedy’s public political opponents, who have all conducted themselves with class, but with his allies in the media. Chris Matthews waited only hours to use the occasion to tinkle down his leg over the anger in town-hall forums prompted by the Barack Obama agenda, and likened it to the assassination of Ted’s older brother John (via Gateway Pundit and Newsbusters):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know there’s going to be a lot of talk about the tragic blessings of the Kennedy family, and the curse. And it’s all nonsense. These people were courageous risk takers. Kathleen Kennedy, the girl, the oldest daughter, she was killed with her lover traveling on a plane ride she never should have taken through terrible weather in Europe. Joe Kennedy, Jr. took a mission that nobody should have taken in a plane loaded with dynamite to go blow up the V-1 rocket sites. Jack Kennedy was killed in an open car in Dallas in the midst of the most hated–it’s like the mood we’re in right now.

Well, except for that pesky fact that John Kennedy was assassinated not by some “un-American” conservative angry at government expansion, but by an avowed Communist, as Mark Finkelstein points out at NB.

Lest you think those are isolated incidents, here’s Matthews again, not politicizing Kennedy’s death on the Today show:

MATTHEWS: He wanted to be his brother’s brother, and then he turned that torch over last year to Barack Obama. And the great thing about the Kennedys is that they always grew as a family. They tended to get better as they got older. Some families like the Long family of Louisiana dissipated. This family got better. The Kennedy commitment to civil rights was almost accidental. It began because of history — ’63 and Martin Luther King’s march. By Bobby, it became passion, by Teddy it became real. And then Teddy turns it over to the first African-American and says, “You got the ball.” Amazing history. Barack’s now the last brother.

Will anyone in the media call out Matthews for his shameless Obama shilling? I somehow doubt it.

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I’d like to take a moment to regale all in a touching personal Teddy Kennedy story as relayed by my father in law recently. Obama had sent out the $250 candy checks to seniors about three months ago and he thought it appropriate to invite us out to one of his favorite bistros to stimulate the local economy. The topic of Teddy renouncing his Owl Club membership at Harvard had come up (he did that after it was revealed he was a member of the exclusive men’s only club after excoriating Samuel Roberts for being a member of Augusta or something). My father in law was one of the guys that had to assist him to the podium for his initiation speech in 1952 or so. As was customary, the seniors presented the pledges to the members. Teddy promptly yakked all over the front row. True story.

On the other hand, if you are offended, you can always go to that bastion of political correctness, the Charles Johnson Memorial Echo Chamber, and watch grown adults fellate a dead lecherous, murderous drunk. Your choice.

Tin foil hat: He agreed to kill Oswald because he was dying anyway. Old assasin trick, hit the hitman right afterward to cover tracks. Mayor of Chicago hit in FL, Gambino during the parade and the SS men who staged the Gleiwitz incident that triggered WWII.

1921 C DRUM on August 26, 2009 at 1:29 PM

I wonder what his motive was. I heard he was a mob guy.
Weren’t there a lot of people who didn’t want the Soviet Union implicated in the assassination, because they feared that would lead to nuclear war?

The media are extremely tone deaf. They do live in a weird bubble, but this is beyond jumping the shark. It’s jumping the humpback whale. Never again will we be silenced, Chris Matthews. Your reign of terror is over.

BTW, Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian nationalist, no? My understanding was always that he shot Bobby Kennedy b/c of Kennedy’s support for Israel during the Six Days War. Wikipedia confirms this, for what it’s worth.

Maybe it’s my age, but except for Eunice, I don’t get the fascination with this family. They built their fortune on bootlegged whiskey. Joseph Kennedy was a mean son of a bitch by all accounts. JFK was a mediocre president at best and would have been largely forgotten to history had he not been shot in the head. I don’t know enough about Bobby to comment, but Teddy has always struck me as the ultimate f*** up, always trying to live up to his brothers’ legacies (false tho they may have been) and failing miserably at it. I wouldn’t wish his disease on anyone, and I’m sorry for his suffering, but I don’t get why we’re supposed to revere a guy who used family connections to escape a jail sentence for manslaughter.

Really is a shame about Joe, Jr. Not only was he truly brave, but he was the son being groomed for the presidency, and for all we know, he might have had real talent. His experience of the war, like JFK’s, would have made him a hawk on defense. We would have been spared the absurdity of Camelot and the grotesqueness of the feckless Teddy becoming ‘the lion of the Senate.’

Why would anyone expect anything less from Chris Matthews? He went to Holy Cross and made his political bones working for Tip O’Neill. He may be from Pennsylvania, but he is as much a Massachusetts Democrat as anyone born there. These people worship the Kennedys – and I mean that literally. I think some of them actually pray to Rose.

lets see Joe Senior seduced a teenage girl while in the home. Ted killed a women. One of the cousins managed to devastate a family with drinking and driving. Another nephew allegedly raped a women in the Kennedy compound. Oh and Joe Senior was a disgusting anti-Semite who in true Kennedy form wanted to cut a deal with tyrannical dictatorship.

I have been spending all my money on protesting this year. It is my new passion. I plan on making my voice heard in DC in a couple weeks. I never thought I would take to the streets in protest. To be making my second trip to DC in 6 months? Unbelievable. Obama owes me a island vacation.

And then Teddy turns it over to the first African-American and says, “You got the ball.” Amazing history. Barack’s now the last brother.

wtf? I keep reading this over and over and I have no clue wtf he’s talking about.

bridgetown on August 26, 2009 at 1:46 PM

You have to know that Kennedy worship is a cult on the East coast.

I suspect Chris is alluding to the highly beloved films circulating in the 60s of the Kennedy brothers playing football at their summer home.

So Chris is channeling his inner poet, the ball is a symbol of Chris Matthew’s lost youth, and he’s all choked up about it, but then he stops, dabs his tears, and says, wait, is that a two-year-old Barack Obama there in the vision? Little man, says Chris, you may be two years old and unable to articulate a coherent sentence, but you shall be President of the United States one day.

No, I mean, what bearing do the friends and enemies of a President’s father have on the assassination of said President’s assassin (Oswald)?
We know it wasn’t the mob that sent Oswald, so why would they silence him with Ruby?

I have been spending all my money on protesting this year. It is my new passion. I plan on making my voice heard in DC in a couple weeks. I never thought I would take to the streets in protest. To be making my second trip to DC in 6 months? Unbelievable. Obama owes me a island vacation.

No, I mean, what bearing do the friends and enemies of a President’s father have on the assassination of said President’s assassin (Oswald)?
We know it wasn’t the mob that sent Oswald, so why would they silence him with Ruby?

Count to 10 on August 26, 2009 at 2:03 PM

Somebody had to put Ruby up to it. And the entrance to the police garage was left unguarded. Curiouser and curiouser.

James Piereson, on his new book, “Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism”:

“In 1963, you have a fairly conservative country, culturally. You have a communist assassinate the president, a popular president. In 1968, the country has kind of gone off the rails, especially liberal-left culture as you find in the universities, and places like that. The students are taking drugs, and they’re demonstrating, and they’re rioting against the war in Vietnam. Their hero is Castro, and people like Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung. So how do you get, really, from this place in 1963, where Kennedy is shot by a communist, to ‘68 where communists like Castro are heroes to the left?”

Piereson argues that Liberals lost it because they were never able process the fact that JFK was killed by a Communist and not some Ultra-right/Klansman/Bircher. To this day they still want it to be true.

To take Matthews argument seriously – if only briefly – Obama is nothing like the Kennedys except perhaps at the edges.

Certainly Obama is not JFK who was much more conservative and a hawk on national security – despite the myths perpetuated by the likes of Oliver Stone. Temperamentally there may be similarities as both Obama and JFK show a rather cool detachment from events.

RFK too was more moderate than Obama – after all he worked with his brother and with McCarthy – but certainly emotionally more of a fighter than Obama. No cool detachment from the world for Bobby.

And Edward Kennedy, certainly no intellectual, was both a fighter and someone who worked in the Senate trenches to get legislation passed. Cracking heads or cracking smiles, he got things done. That’s not Obama.

Barack Obama has some vague, rough similarities with the Kennedys – JFK’s coolnes and EMK’S ideology – but the differences are more profound.

I can’t stand the fact that “right-wing hate” is blamed for JFK when LHO would have been a member of ACORN if it had existed at the time and would’ve been wearing a Che t-shirt if one was available. BHO has more in common politically with LHO than he does with JFK.

..waddya wanna bet the Dems bundle this old drunk’s carcass up, put it on a train around to all of the Dem havens and venues. You know, like Kareem’s NBA farewell tour back in the 90s. I’m thinking 3o-city tour with rallies and people giving him commemorative gifts.

Hell, I have an old U.S. Diver’s snorkel and mask I am willing to throw on the beir.

Jack Kennedy was killed in an open car in Dallas in the midst of the most hated–it’s like the mood we’re in right now.

As usual, Matthews proves how ignorant he is with his over the top adoration of everything liberal.

Yes Kennedy’s people were concerned about a hostel crowd in Dallas but ended up being pleasantly surprised by the huge,smiling,flag waving crowds that had gathered to see the President.
You can even hear Kennedy’s people make the statement “Dallas loves you Mr. President” in some of the most widely distributed and viewed film in the world showing Kennedy’s motorcade.
Apparently Matthews is one of the 3 people on earth not to have seen this massively distributed video of the Kennedy assassination and the thousands of happy people,vigorously waving flags and smiling at the President.

Apparently Matthews is also one of only a few people who don’t realize that Kennedy’s assassin was a devoted leftist and communist.

But just like matthews and his liberal shills, this does not fit his narrative of “hateful,middle American Neanderthals thirsting for Kenndy’s blood.
Just like they totally ignore all the violence perpetrated by democrats at these town halls to paint Grandma as a “crazy nazi mobster”.

A suspect in a vandalism at the Colorado Democratic headquarters was once a paid campaign worker for a Democratic candidate for the Legislature, according to public records.

Maurice Schwenkler, 24, was arrested in Denver Tuesday on a charge of criminal mischief after windows were smashed at Democratic offices. Many of the windows displayed posters supporting health care reform, and (democratic) party officials called it political vandalism.

The Denver Post reported Wednesday that Schwenkler was also arrested in St. Paul, Minn., on the last day of the 2008 Republican convention on a charge of unlawful assembly.

Once again if you want to know what a democrat is up to, just look at what they are accusing a Republican of doing.

I can’t stand the fact that “right-wing hate” is blamed for JFK when LHO would have been a member of ACORN if it had existed at the time and would’ve been wearing a Che t-shirt if one was available. BHO has more in common politically with LHO than he does with JFK.

Imus last day on RFD TV this Friday word is he is moving to Fox Business Channel that will put him on at the same time as his old MSNBC time slot in the Morning. This should be fun.

Dr Evil on August 26, 2009 at 2:16 PM

I figured this was in the works since he’s been pushing FBN and dissing RFDTV for the last few months. I stream the show from time to time, mainly to find out what the enemies are thinking, and it’s funny and entertaining.

At the same time, since going to WABC, the show has quite a few more conservative guests, which makes Imus more bearable as well.

Chris Matthews lost all credibility after the Iraq War commenced. He became an overt partisan, who became an open advocate for any and all liberal policies, while parroting whatever reasoning the DNC pushed.

If you look at his ratings of 600,000 people-it is incomprehensible the type of authority that politicos try to give Matthews and his show. Amazingly, he may be more palatable than the angry, mean-spirited, illogical Olbermann, and the pleasant-and-snarky combo of Rachel Maddow. David Schuster is an arrogant, sniveling, condescending jerk as well.

MSNBC’s primetime lineup’s problems do not lie with the left-of-center policies that they openly advocate as much as the condescension that comes through towards the sparse viewers that they think so little of.

funny that, Tweety attacked Hill when she had the gaul to tell an editorial board there was no rush to have a candidate in June, that Bobby had just gotten the nomination when he was killed..Tweety said she was endangering Obama by saying that and wishing it would happen to him

Sorry, Ed, but JFK wasn’t assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a committed communist – at least not by Oswald alone.

When you get shot in the back of the head with a high powered rifle, your brains fly out the front, not the back, of your head.

Look at the Zapruder film slow-motion and not that he was hit by a front and a back shot almost simultaneously.

That triviality aside, though, Matthews and the Peacock Network can’t help themselves about trying to link Ted’s death with an urgent need to pass a sweeping health care overhaul bill that no one reads before voting on.

They simply can’t help themselves.

Like when Tim Russert died, they had to link his death with what they perceived to be the obscenity of the war in Iraq.

Joe Kennedy, Jr. took a mission that nobody should have taken in a plane loaded with dynamite to go blow up the V-1 rocket sites.

I admired what Joe Jr and Jack did in service to this country. Also, thought that President Kennedy was good, showed courage by taking responsibility for the Bay of Pigs. However, as Joe Jr and Jack would say/admit, there were too many heroes to count during WWII and many took on missions that were suicidal. Can’t imagine Chrissy Tingleunderstanding this type of devotion to country or of expecting that he would ever put his sorry A$$ on the line for it, either. He couldn’t make a “pimple” on a true patriots A$$.

I would agree with her, but what we’re all mostly commenting on is the politicization of his death.
We all knew that typical of the leftists, they would cynically use this event to advance their agenda.

He was a political animal, and if the Left is going to ‘use’ this, then maybe some of the more sleazier aspects of his life should be addressed.

Ted Kennedy was an animal. His drinking and womanizing was over the top. The only reason he didn’t end up in jail for his many transgressions was because of his connections with very powerful people. Unfortunately, his brothers were not much better. The left idolizes them because they lived the liberal ideal of being able to engage in uninhibited sexual liaisons and drinking without consequences. It is sad that such men have risen to positions of power and hero worship with so many Americans.

Why does our society think that men like Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson and their ilk deserve to be revered? If we can figure out how to reverse this trend, perhaps the country still has a chance.

I, for one, hope Teddy is now answering, face to face, to those 58,000 brave Americans he, along with his allies Mansfield, Church, et.al., sold down the river in Vietnam. THEIR sacrifice is a much bigger story than his death will ever be.
Just another Vietnam Vet, II Field Force Vietnam, 1969-70.

Chris Matthews waited only hours to use the occasion to tinkle down his leg over the anger in town-hall forums prompted by the Barack Obama agenda, and likened it to the assassination of Ted’s older brother John

I’m not sure that was tinkle, Ed. Was there a picture of obama anywhere around?